


Taking Care

by Flamel



Series: Maddie Dies In This [2]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Danny is having off screen shennanigans, F/M, From Vlad's perspective, Jazz knows everything, No Beta, Vlad cares about Jack, Vlad is very tired, We die like Maddie, but he can't admit it, even to himself, house arrest, no one is coping well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-01
Updated: 2021-01-01
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:29:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28476204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flamel/pseuds/Flamel
Summary: After Grief is the Weapon of Ghosts, Jack disappears into the Ghost Zone for nearly three months, leaving his children in Vlad's care.No one is happy about this.
Relationships: Jack Fenton & Vlad Masters, Jack Fenton/Maddie Fenton, Maddie Fenton & Vlad Masters
Series: Maddie Dies In This [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2085732
Comments: 4
Kudos: 32





	Taking Care

**Author's Note:**

> I blame 13thCat for encouraging this. Why does all my writing get done between twelve and two a.m. You really have to read Grief is the Weapon of Ghosts for this to make sense.

Danny is pretty sure this is a nightmare. He certainly feels like he’s been sleepwalking, these past two weeks. Nothing feels real anymore, and he can’t bear the thought of waking up when reality is just… so much worse. His mom is dead and he’s not sure how he’s supposed to live with that.

Except that things just took a horrifying, surreal turn and he’s honestly hoping that the last two weeks have been a cruel hallucination brought on by one of his enemies. Surely it would make more sense than this? This is his  _ actual worst case scenario _ . What are the chances? After all, his Dad inexplicably vanishing, leaving behind only a cryptic note and then Vlad coming to tell him that Danny will be living with him for a while is legit apocalypse level bullshit. It’s just. The universe can’t be that messed up. It  _ can’t _ . 

Anyways if this isn’t a terrible hallucination caused by a soon to be  _ very dead _ foe then Danny is very secure in blaming Vlad.

“What did you do?” He howls at Vlad, voice inching worryingly close to a Wail, “Tell him that Mom was in the Ghost Zone? Send him on some kind of… Orpheus style quest?  _ Don’t you think I’ve lost enough?” _

“I swear Daniel,” Vlad tells him wearily, “I have no idea what Jack was thinking or where he’s gone. I had nothing to do with this.” Vlad’s eyes are rimmed in red and his suit is rumpled. He looks tired. Danny wonders if it’s guilt, and feels no sympathy. Whatever Vlad is going through is nothing compared to the hell  _ his _ life has become. Also most of Vlad’s misery is self inflicted so looking sorry and pitiful isn’t actually helping his case.

“Dad is missing and you got custody!” Danny shrieks, “Two out of three of the things you’re always going on about wanting more than anything else in the world and you expect me to believe that you had  _ nothing to do with it?” _

\------------------------------------------

Vlad honestly had nothing to do with this. Things have felt meaningless, and slow, since Maddie’s- since Maddie. It feels like the core has been taken from his world, like orbiting a black hole, like nothing is worth trying, if she’s not there to see. It hurts how little his day to day has changed, it hurts how much his foundations have rocked, having her gone. She wasn’t present in his life, not really, not for a long time. But she was behind everything he did, every action he took she was on his mind. It’s like the color has leached out of the world and left the picture the same but unmistakably altered. And then he got the phone call.

_ “I need you to take the kids, Vladdie.” _ Jack’s voice echoes out of his cell as he replays the message again, hoping for new clues. Jack sounds very calm, strangely calm for a man who had always been so oafishly boisterous. His voice is level and even and something about it makes Vlad’s  _ teeth _ prickle.

_ “I’m going away with Maddie,”  _ Jack continues, still eerily calm,  _ “I know you’ll take care of them.” _ A pause, and Vlad can’t help but hold his breath.  _ “You’ve always been my best friend Vladdie” _ Jack says, like he’s really saying something entirely else, like he’s left novels to be read into that one sentence,  _ “Take care.” _ And then nothing. No explanation. No timeframe, no way to reach him- his phone has been disconnected, even that stupid Fenton Phone he was so proud of. He just… vanished.

The Spectre Speeder had vanished, and he’d left a note to the kids saying he was going to the Ghost Zone. He’d locked the portal behind him, probably forgetting, the damn fool, that the portal only opened from the  _ human _ side. He’d disabled the kids access too, like an idiot. Honestly, what kind of buffoon locked themselves out of their own  _ dimension? _ Jack was lucky Vlad had his own portal, or the oaf would have been in real trouble.

Not that Vlad was going to help Jack. After all, Jack had inadvertently handed Vlad everything he wanted. Jack was gone, Vlad had custody of the children- Vlad had immediately taken Jasmine and Daniel to his mansion and then put up both ghost and human shields all over the property to keep Daniel from doing anything ill advised. It meant Vlad couldn’t leave either, but he’d taken a leave of absence from all his duties using grief and the need for an adjustment period as an excuse. It would do for now. He had also locked down his ghost portal. After all, it would do very little good to keep Daniel from using the front door if he could just skip dimensions.

“Let me go!” Daniel yells at him from across the room. Vlad had found him trying to force the portal open. “You can’t keep me here forever! This is a kidnapping!” Vlad sighs, feeling his headache coming back. Having Daniel as his son without Daniel admitting to being his son was a much bigger pain than he’d expected.

“I’m your legal guardian now,” Vlad reminds Daniel, again. “I can’t kidnap you if I’m your legal guardian, kidnapping would be if someone took you from me.”

“My Dad’s not dead!” Daniel yells back, going red in the face. Daniel hasn’t spoken to him in anything lower than a bellow since Vlad had shown up on his doorstep with the police to tell him that he and Jasmine were going to live with Vlad for a while. 

“No one said he was,” Vlad sighs, thoroughly sick of this argument. They’d had it several times by this point. “But he is missing, and as your godfather, and since Jack asked me to care for you before he left, the courts have awarded me temporary custody, to be reevaluated should Jack ever bother to show his face again.”

“So you are behind this!” Daniel accuses, and Vlad pauses and replays the conversation in his head to figure out where Daniel got  _ that _ from.

“Pardon?” Vlad finally asks, confused.

“You spoke to him before he left!” Daniel insists, his eyes flaring brightly. They hadn’t been blue since Maddie died, and Vlad is pretty sure their poisonous, luminescent green is why Daniel hadn’t been home much, before Jack vanished. “If he even left at all,” Daniel throws out, crossing his arms and giving Vlad a look so scathing that Vlad is mildly convinced Daniel is actually trying to kill him with his eyes alone. Vlad sighs again, closing his eyes briefly. He’s too  _ tired _ for this. After Maddie died it seemed like all he could do was sleep, but since Jack vanished all his dreams are restless and disturbed. Probably because the oaf keeps blundering through them with  _ no _ regard for how it always makes him jerk awake, sweating and confused. Jack never did let him keep any peace or dignity, and it just figures that he would continue to torment Vlad even after vanishing off the face of the planet.

“He left me a message on my answering machine,” Vlad tells Daniel, trying to convey disdain but pretty sure he only managed to hit exhausted. “Since I was, like most reasonable people, sleeping at two a.m. when he called, I missed it, and he didn’t pick up when I called back in the morning.” Vlad hasn’t actually been asleep at two a.m. for the last thirteen days. He just can’t seem to, no matter how hard he tries. He’ll watch the numbers on his clock tick over to two, and then two o’ one, and so on, and finally around two thirty his eyes will start to close but even that brings no relief. He’s never suffered from insomnia before, but maybe he’s developing a sleep condition or something. It did start at the same time as the nightmares, after all.

“You just need to accept it Daniel,” Vlad tells the child, trying to keep the weariness dragging at his bones out of his voice, “Jack is gone.”

\----------------------------------------

“I don’t pay you to ask questions!” Vlad hisses at Skulker. It’s late, just past the witching hour, and Vlad is hoping desperately that Daniel is asleep for once. Or, at the very least, that he hasn’t discovered  _ this _ particular secret room and isn’t currently eavesdropping. Vlad would settle for that, honestly. 

“You are supposed to be the greatest hunter in the Ghost Zone,” Vlad insists, feeling more than a little frazzled, “Can you find Jack Fenton or not?”

“Of course I can!” Skulker puffs up, looking insulted, “I’m just confused. I thought you hated the guy? Why do you want him found?”

“I do!” Vlad shakes his head violently, “I mean, I don’t! I mean-” he hesitates and composes himself. “Obviously I hate him,” he tells Skulker, his tone dripping with distaste, “That’s why I need to make sure he’s not coming back. Also-” Vlad is struck with a lighting realization, “He said he’d be with Maddie. It’s probably just more rambling nonsense, but if he  _ is _ with her, then finding him will find her as well.” He smirks, pleased with his own brilliance. Skulker side eyes him and Vlad ignores the skepticism in his expression.

“Whatever you say, boss.” Skulker finally agrees, shaking his head as he leaves. Vlad ignores him. This plan is obviously fool proof, no matter what Skulker might think.

\-------------------------------------------

Jasmine is sitting up at the dining room table, watching rain pelt the windows, an untouched cup of tea steaming at her elbow. Vlad hesitates before approaching her. She has always been a non-entity in his plans, honestly, but she is his ward now, as surely as her brother, and she is one of the last pieces of Maddie remaining in the world which is something too precious to disregard, now that the original is gone. He still doesn’t speak to her much, but now it has more to do with the way the shape of her eyes, and the color of her hair, and something in the structure of her face reminds him so much of his beloved Maddie. Lightning illuminates the room, and he pretends his flinch is due to the thunder, and not the way that for a moment, in the dim lighting, it almost looked like Maddie sitting at that table, arms folded next to untouched tea.

“Is the storm keeping you up?” He asks politely, knowing it isn’t true. He’s taken to being invisible during his own nighttime wanderings after she kept catching him unawares. Jasmine looks at him, distinctly unimpressed, and he does his best not to quail when her eyes seem to cut right through him.

“You’re not coping as well as you think you are,” Jasmine tells him, with no explanation. She takes a sip from her tea as if she has just remembered it exists.

“Pardon?” Vlad asks weakly. Her eyes are electric in the dim light, and he tries not to let on the way he struggles to meet them.

“I thought Danny was right at first,” Jasmine tells him conversationally, “It was too perfect for you, the way Dad just vanished and we had to come here, to live with you.” Her tone feels like it should be accusing, but surprisingly, it's not. He still has to fight to keep from squirming under it.

“I had nothing to do with Jack’s disappearance,” He tells her, aiming for imperious but coming out closer to impetuous.

“I know,” she agrees, sipping her tea and thoroughly stealing the wind from his sails, “You’re too lost for someone who planned this.” He feels adrift again. This is why he doesn’t like Jasmine.

“Pardon?” He asks again, already regretting it.

“You’re mourning,” Jasmine tells him, matter of fact. He blinks.

“You know I loved your mother-” He tries, tentatively. Jasmine scoffs.

“Not  _ her, _ ” Jasmine says, and the shake of her hand could almost be mistaken for a sharp gesture, if not for the wobble of her mug. She corrects it and puts it back down, only a little tea having sloshed out, leaving a sheen of wetness on the table and her hand. The wetness in her eyes goes unremarked. “Well,” Jasmine reconsiders, “Not  _ just _ her. You’re mourning my father too.” Vlad splutters, incoherent.

“I most certainly am  _ not _ ,” he finally manages to get out, indignant. Jasmine gives him a withering look.

“And  _ that’s _ why I don’t believe you had anything to do with it.” Jasmine tells him primly, “I could believe you were faking grief, but I can’t imagine how you would successfully fake these bewildering levels of grief and denial. You are startlingly unaware.” Vlad splutters again for several moments as Jasmine returns to staring out the window.

“You know,” Jasmine tells him idly, “I think you’re almost as angry at my father as I am.” Vlad blinks at her, caught by surprise.

“You’re angry?” He asks. He hadn’t noticed, actually, any anger from her. He never would have guessed.

“I’m allowed to be angry,” she tells him defensively, “All my psychology books say so.” Her knuckles are white on the handle of her mug. “I don’t want to be angry,” she admits, staring into the tea that has stopped steaming, “I’m so tired, and sad, and it takes so much to keep being angry.” She sighs, her shoulders slumping. “I’m still angry though, and I don’t know how to stop.”

“Yelling at Jack might help,” Vlad suggests, feeling very out of his depth, “When he gets back-” She cuts him off with a bark of laughter.

“You and I both know that he’s not coming back.” Jasmine tells him bitterly, “It’s why we’re angry. Danny hasn’t figured it out yet-” she traces the rim of her mug with a finger, and the dampness on the table from the tea with the light and patterns from the rain almost make it look like it’s storming inside, just very quietly. “It’s why he’s only angry at you.” She finishes softly.

“He just said he was visiting the Ghost Zone,” Vlad protests, feeling very much like he’s missed part of the conversation while simultaneously feeling like he knows what she means all too well, “He never said he wasn’t coming back-” Jasmine cuts him off again.

“I know a suicide note when I see one,” she tells him firmly, and Vlad feels like he’s been punched in the gut. She stares out the window again, her eyes fixed on the rain. “I’m allowed to be angry.” 

Vlad leaves, feeling deeply unsettled, and tries to tell himself that she’s just a girl, playing that she knows more than she does.

His dreams are restless, and he chases the shadow of a giant he can never catch through sheets of pouring tea. 

\-------------------------------------------

“I have school!” Daniel tells him, self righteously “You can’t keep me here forever! How the hell are you getting away with this?”

“It’s been a month and a half, Daniel,” Vlad sighs, feeling very put upon, “Your mother just died and your father has gone mysteriously missing. Also, I’m a billionaire. I can do whatever I want. No truant officer on earth would bother me.”

“What about my education?” Daniel asks, and Vlad wonders how he doesn’t choke on the hypocrisy of that.

“Because you took your education so seriously,” Vlad comments dryly. Daniel flushes. Honestly Vlad is just happy his volume has reduced down to loud and indignant but at speaking levels, instead of the constant shouting it was before. He’ll take the small blessings.

“Social isolation then!” Daniel switches tracks, “I’ve been through something very trying and I should be able to talk to my friends! At least give me my phone back.”

“When we have gone more than a week without your friends attempting to break into my house, you may have your phone back.” Vlad tells him, scowling. “And since their last attempt involved  _ blowing up the garden wall _ , I think CPS or anyone else you would appeal to would agree with me.” Daniel subsides, grumbling. Vlad would be worried about Daniel dealing with his grief with no distractions, except for the fact that Daniel has decided to distract himself by becoming an escape artist. Vlad  _ still _ doesn’t know how he got that wolf-like ghost past the shields, but luckily he caught them before Daniel actually managed to escape. And Vlad does not want to know what he’s plotting with the Dairy King, but he keeps catching them whispering together. It’s very stressful, but at least it keeps everyone busy. Including him.

\------------------------------------------

Two months, three weeks, five days and fourteen hours after Jack went missing, Vlad’s ghost portal lights up. It’s a bit of a surprise since it’s still locked down, so it must have been one of the ghosts he had given a key to. Skulker steps through, followed by-

Orange, and big-

“Jack?” He gasps, and of course he sounds relieved, he still needs this fool to trust him, why is he back, why is he  _ here _ , where has he  _ been _ -

“Vladdie!” Jack calls, beaming, and it’s almost enough to erase the memory of his voice fearfully even and heavy with things unsaid over the tinny recorder of the phone, “I didn’t know you had your own portal!” That breaks the trance like a bucket of cold water.

Why would Skulker bring him  _ here _ ? He was supposed to find Jack and report back, not retrieve him! All his secrets were at risk and- who was that behind Jack?

“Maddie?” He asked, disbelieving. It… it  _ was _ her, color swapped and floating, but unmistakably Maddie.

Jasmine was wrong, he thinks faintly. It hadn’t been a suicide note. It had been entirely literal and Jack was just too much of a  _ buffoon _ to explain properly what was going on.

“Dad?” Comes a voice from the top of the stairs, and Vlad whips around to see Daniel, dressed in some strange, entirely black attire with cans of… spray paint? Strapped to his belt. What had he been planning with  _ that? _ _ “Mom? _ ” Daniel croaks, and drops the crowbar he’d been holding. Vlad blinks and Daniel is across the room, holding onto both parents with all his might. Jack has him wrapped up in his arms, and Maddie is crying into his hair, choking out explanations that are too disconnected to make any sense.

“Danny!” Comes Jasmine’s voice and Vlad smothers a flinch, “This is a stupid plan, don’t-” She comes into view and freezes. “Dad?” She asks faintly. Jack smiles up at her tearily.

“Jazzy-Pants!” He exclaims, and Jasmine is running over to him as well, shouting and berating him through her tears. He almost thinks she missed Maddie’s presence until she ropes her mother into her arms and presses their foreheads together, weeping. Vlad moves quietly to leave.

“Vladdie.” Jack’s voice stops him, and he can’t help but turn. Jack meets his eyes with sincerity burning in them, and Vlad finds himself transfixed. “Thank you,” Jack tells him, solemnly, “For taking care of them.” Vlad flees.

**Author's Note:**

> Welp. Have fun suffering with me. I'm going to bed.


End file.
